Visit your conman in jail, Brid, but not Bulgaria
Brid Murphy accompanying her husband Michael Lynn on one of his past appearances in court, this week she told how the couple spent a weekend in Bulgaria
Thursday May 29 2008
I used to feel sorry for Brid Murphy. She must have thought she'd hit the jackpot and married a high flier -- only to discover her husband was a swindler without scruples, integrity or regard for consequences.
Yes, I had sympathy for her once. Not any more.
Jaws dropped this week when she went into court and blithely admitted to being in regular contact with Michael Lynn. They'd just spent a weekend together in Bulgaria -- he picked her up from the airport, she revealed.
This is the same Michael Lynn who's a disbarred solicitor with fraudulent mortgage debts of €80m, on the run since last year.
The admission alone was staggering, but there was also the reason for the legal action. In my innocence, I presumed Lynn's wife was giving evidence to help decipher his complex paper trail.
Silly me. Brid Murphy was in the High Court applying for half the proceeds from their dream home, a period property sold for a knockdown €4.7m recently.
But a number of banks have also been chasing that money to cover some of their losses. Multiple mortgages were taken out on the house in Howth as Lynn constructed a shaky property empire.
Despite her 1950s housefrau defence that business was beyond her and she just did as her husband instructed, Brid Murphy insisted she should benefit from Glenlion House's sale. None of the blame but half of the profits, please.
That's double think as far as I'm concerned. And by indulging in it, she does her reputation no favours.
ACC Bank settled with her yesterday. It's estimated she'll receive no more than around €450,000 -- although another bank is taking proceedings against her so who knows whether she can claw back that much. It's all chickenfeed in the context of what Lynn owes, but a debt is a debt.
There is no criminal action against Lynn, finally struck off (and don't the wheels of justice grind sluggishly) the roll of solicitors last week. As for collecting on the €2m fine imposed by the High Court -- the Law Society joins a lengthy queue.
The banks aren't the only ones after him. The Garda fraud squad is investigating Lynn, and its modus operandi moves at an even more leisurely pace than the legal world's.
All that stands against him is a High Court order; this is civil and has no jurisdiction outside Ireland.
Mystifying, I know, but the guards aren't yet pressing criminal charges which would allow him to be extradited from one of those European countries he's wandering at leisure. Collecting the funds he has salted away, I imagine. Lynn doesn't strike me as a man intending to rough it in a South American jungle.
So Brid Murphy -- despite her brass neck or the scales over her eyes, depending on your impression of her -- is not harbouring a fugitive. Nor is she withholding information about a criminal. And in a democracy she is entitled to take legal action, however misguided it seems.
As for her decision to support a man exposed as a charlatan -- love is blind, and some prize loyalty above any virtue. But I say she should be showing her loyalty by visiting him in prison and not in Sofia.
The former nurse talked about a breast cancer scare and her father's chemotherapy, and made a reference to finding the High Court environment somewhat intimidating. She insisted her marriage was intact and spoke of trusting her husband.
But she didn't mention Lynn coming home to face the music. She didn't even take the opportunity to state that she thought what he did was wrong. She was too busy standing by him, despite alleging several of her signatures were forged. Such an extraordinarily forgiving nature.
Meanwhile the gardai urgently need to restore public confidence. Where are the criminal charges against Lynn? Presumably the fraud squad is attempting to pull together a number of complicated charges and intends to hit him with a sledgehammer.
But it's taking too long and people are aghast at reports of his unimpeded movement from country to country. No doubt the guards are tracking him, but they should be seen to act.
We have a small, traditional police force without expertise in sophisticated fraud cases, such as the Guinness and Maxwell cases in Britain. Catching gangs scamming ATM machines is the height of their experience. I expect Lynn has left a byzantine paper trail -- until caught, he was a sophisticated trickster as he helped himself to clients' accounts and used forgery and fraud to line his pockets.
Losing his licence to practise law is water off a duck's back, because property developers of his delusional arrogance don't schlep about the district court handling parking fines.
Criminal action is the way forward and the guards ought to prepare a sample case against Lynn on one of the counts for which they have the paperwork. They can use it to initiate criminal proceedings and ramp up their powers against him.
As for Brid Murphy, in continuing to stand by her husband so unequivocally she allies herself with a con man. Initially, she deserved our sympathy as a woman deceived -- now she has squandered that.
It will take more than courtroom tears to reclaim what's been lost.
We're looking at a woman duped twice over.
- Martina Devlin
